R-KV-R-Y QUARTERLY
In the End, the Beginning
Stephanie Johnson
In the End, the Beginning
Stephanie Johnson
WHEN I COME IN FROM WORK, Kermit is sitting at my kitchen table. I nearly jump out of
my skin.
“Make me a cup of coffee?” he asks.
“Isn’t this abuse of landlord privileges?”
“You’re not just a tenant to me.” Kermit plays with his heavy ring of keys. “You’re my friend, my
confidante.”
“Something on your mind?”
“Funny you should ask. Kenny and I have been talking.”
“The Kenny?”
Kermit raises an eyebrow at me. “You think I’ve lost it, don’t you?” He shakes his head. “I thought
so, too. Even in death that damn man won’t leave me alone. It’s worse than A Christmas Carol.”
After my father died, my mother used to see him walking around the house. She swore he came
back to torture her by playing the accordion. She swore that she’d know she was in hell if she
heard accordion music when she entered the white light.
“What does Kenny want?”
“The same stuff he wanted when he was here. Don’t leave your hair in the sink after you shave.
Take out the trash. Eat a vegetable.” Kermit sighs. “Where do you think he is? I just want to know
he’s okay. I mean, I don’t think I believe in God anymore —or maybe it’s that God doesn’t believe in
me — but I want to know what you think.”
I look at the crows feet around Kermit’s eyes. His pale skin and the scruff shadowing his jaw make
him look tired.
I’m a cop-out agnostic. Content to say something exists, I am unable to pledge allegiance and
servitude to a deity and unwilling to embrace the morbidity of eternity existing in a pine box
burrowed through by worms.
“I don’t know what happens when we die.”
Dante fills my head and I wish Virgil could make an effort to save us. If life could imitate art, we
would each have a guide, but in this life, nothing divine intervenes for us. All we have is each other.
WEDNESDAY NIGHT’S REHEARSAL goes better. We make it all the way to the brain-
eaters from Canto XXXIII and Seth seems pleased. During a break, I ask him about his meeting with
Chuck.
“The good news is he’s single; the bad news – he’s straight.”
“That’s too bad.”
“He asked about you.”
“Did you tell him I have a leaky faucet?”
“I told him that your plumbing could use a good cleaning.”
“That’s attractive.”
“It’s a harmless crush. It could be worse. It’s not like I signed you up for an arranged marriage.”
After rehearsal, Chuck approaches me. “Hey,” he says flatly, reminding me of every boy I ever
knew in high school.
“You’ve come a long way in learning your lines.”
“Seth helped. So did these.” Chuck pulls a worn copy of Cliff’s Notes from his jeans.
“Did Seth give you those?”
“Library.”
“You went to the library?”
Chuck ignores this. He hooks his thumbs in his jeans and inflates his chest. “I’ve got a question for
you.”
Chuck’s eyes are a perfect shade of blue, the color of the sky right before it gets dark.
“This might sound stupid, but it’s bugging me. I thought this thing was supposed to be a comedy.”
I imagine the things Chuck might say to inspire laughter. I imagine he’s the type of man who
mishears song lyrics and sings awful alternatives with a straight face. I imagine he misuses big
words all the time: I’m notorious for my lovemaking skills.
“How can this be a comedy if nobody’s laughing?” He seems genuinely confused.
“That’s a more contemporary definition of comedy,” I say. “The classic distinction between comedy
and tragedy depends on what happens to the character at the end. In tragedy, a ‘good’ person
meets with a bad ending and the audience responds with pity and fear. In a classic comedy, the
audience witnesses a rise in fortune of a character they like. Things work out well for a good
person. In other words, there’s a happy ending.”
“So, I have to be likeable.”
“It helps, yes.”
“I can do that.” He stares at me and the pause is awkward. I button my coat. I see Kermit hanging
over the balcony, and I’m suddenly self-conscious, a young girl on her first date.
“Anything else?”
“Yeah.” Chuck cocks his head to the side. “If I practice – being likeable – do you think you’d like to
get a beer with me?”
My mind moves forward. I imagine how this will end: clothes on the floor, sweaty bodies, an
overwhelming sense of regret. This is destined to be a tragedy.
In the balcony, Kermit clears his throat.
“I can’t,” I tell Chuck. “I ride share with Kermit.”
“Oh.” He bounces back from his disappointment quickly. “Okay, I’ll think of something.” He winks at
me and walks away backwards, keeping his eyes on me until he’s at the door.
IN THE CAR, Kermit hisses at me. “What’s wrong with you?”
“What?”
“He’s gorgeous, and you need a date.”
“I’m fine on my own.”
“God knows I love you, but I think you’re missing the point. You can’t spend your days caring for a
man who’s trying to catch pneumonia and a frail, old queen who’ll die when he does.”
“Please don’t.”
“That’s the reality of it.” He holds my hand. His fingers feel as frail as dried twigs. “I was the whore
of Babylon. I flew by the seat of my pants – when I was wearing pants, that is.” His laugh turns to a
dry cough. “Kenny had a way of making none of that matter. All of this,” he says, looking at me. “It’s
been worth it.”
Kermit squeezes my hand. “You could be lonely for a lot of reasons, Goose. Fear, convenience,
laziness… a bad experience with someone or something you loved.” He tucks a strand of hair
behind my ear. “It’s pretty easy to be lonely, but it’s also pretty pointless.”
IT’S LATE, BUT BORIS comes upstairs when he returns from the lab. “I’ve been thinking,”
he says as soon as I let him in the door. “What about the market for a cold vaccine. Does it even
exist? I bet most people won’t be willing to spend money until they get infected.”
His cheeks are red from the cold weather and excitement of deep thought. “Even if a spray could
be created that would keep rhinoviruses from attaching to the ICAM-1 receptors on nasal epithelial
cells, would people care?”
I nod. Boris rants about Ipratroprium, Naproxen and interferon-alpha2b. When he finally settles
down next to me on the couch with a glass of wine, I declare a moratorium on science.
“Let’s talk about love.”
“Kermit’s passion; I’m logic.”
“Not true. People aren’t that easy. Have you or have you not been in love?”
“It doesn’t matter.” Boris fidgets as he sits next to me.
“Of course, it matters.”
“There was a woman. Before I began work on my doctorate.”
“What was she like?”
“What does it matter? She’s not here now.”
“But she existed. She was a piece of your life.”
“Exactly. Past tense.”
“Still, you must think of her now and then.”
Boris shakes his head. “She could be a housewife in Oklahoma or a showgirl in Vegas. It makes no
difference.”
“You’re not curious at all?”
Boris snorts. “You and Kermit both equate love with a fear of letting go. Maybe I did the best thing
by letting her leave. The memory doesn’t remember things as they were, but more often as we wish
they’d been. Once a person leaves your life, you can change things. Who’ll disagree with you? You
forget things: birthmarks, crooked teeth, hot tempers, until you’re more in love with the idea of that
person. I choose not to do that.”
Boris is right, but I’d never tell him so. I still remember my leading men, even though we left each
other long ago. I remember Cyrano’s drunken kisses in the costume room, the lines of Petruchio’s
muscular arms, and Jack Worthing’s highbrow wit. Neither Rosencrantz nor Guildenstern ever gave
me an orgasm, and Estragon and I mutually decided we could no longer wait for Godot. I remember
how the Man from La Mancha never looked over his shoulder the last time he walked away from my
apartment.
AT REHEARSAL, I sit near the back of the house. I try to take notes, but Chuck mesmerizes
me. His lines are perfect. He’s animated. He’s given Dante the Pilgrim a sense of purpose. For the
first time, we make it through the entire play in a single rehearsal.
Seth whispers to me as he stares at Chuck, “Is that our Chuck? This is too good to be true.”
At the end of the evening, Seth is glowing. He tells me, “I think we might pull this off.”
Once Seth dismisses the cast, Chuck jogs back and tugs on my coat to stop me from leaving.
“Dante’s like a plumber, ” he says.
“Do tell. How is the author of one of the most profound poems ever written—like a plumber?”
“Dante’s got to go to hell to see people who have fallen into traps, who are making excuses.
Dante’s got to soak up all this stuff so he doesn’t make the same mistakes. Hell’s not only about
wrong action. It’s also about wrong belief. Dante’s like a plumber because he has to get down in
everyone else’s shit to know how he sees the world.”
Chuck is proud of himself. He smiles. “Have a beer with me?”
“No.”
Chuck is still smiling. “Okay,” he says. “Dante waited forever, too. But in the end – once he gets to
Paradise—he sees his girl.”
BORIS STOPS BY MY OFFICE at the Institute, so I know he’s excited. “December 8th.
Mark your calendar.”
“What’s the occasion?” I ask, still trying to recover from the shock of seeing him standing next to my
desk.
“The planets will line up.”
“Planets?”
“Those things in the solar system, Goose. Monday night. I’m borrowing a telescope so we can see
Pluto,” he adds over his shoulder as he disappears into the hallway.
SUNDAY MORNING, Kermit comes downstairs and hands me two tapes.
“What’s this?”
“In case,” he says and neither of us finishes his thought. “One for you, one for Seth.” He pours
himself a cup of coffee and sits down. “I think it’ll fit what Seth’s doing.”
“How did you do this so quickly?”
“The script, some of Dante’s love poetry from the Vita nuova, a little bit of criticism on the collected
works of Dante, and Kenny.”
“Were you talking with him?”
“Remembering him. After reading the love poems, I realized Kenny’s my Beatrice.” Kermit’s
forehead wrinkles.
“Dante says that love moves from preoccupation with your own feelings, to enjoyment of the other
person, to ultimate concern with the other person’s happiness. For Dante, this became concern
with Beatrice’s spiritual well being because she died young. Like Kenny. Dante’s willing to go
through hell to meet her again.”
Kermit looks out the window. “I was stuck in phase two, still thinking about how much I enjoy Kenny.
This,” he taps the tape. “This is me in phase three. Me concerned only about Kenny.
“I met Kenny at a closing night party and we talked all night. I was scared shitless. Kenny was so
smart, I thought there was no way he’d want to spend the rest of his life with a landscaper who
dabbled in community theater as a way to meet men and get free drinks. But we were happy. Even
now, some people may see this as a horrible way to die, but I’d do it again.”
BEFORE WE MEET FOR our television party, Kermit hatches a new plan for driving Boris
crazy. At 7:30, I stop upstairs to see if Kermit wants a pizza and find him in a t-shirt, his pajama
bottoms, and a tuxedo jacket with tails.
“What’s the occasion?”
Kermit leans out his door, hollers Boris’ name down the stairwell, waits for a response and then,
with the grandeur of a prodigy, flips his tails and sits at the organ. The evening’s repertoire
consists of songs originally about sunshine. He belts his way through standard favorites like
Mucous on my Shoulder Makes Me Happy, You are the Rhinovirus of My Life, and is just about to
hit the high note in You Are my Nasal Spray, my only Nasal Spray, You make me hap-PY when
Boris bolts upstairs and begins bashing Kermit in the head with a red velour pillow from Kermit’s
couch.
Even if Boris gets a kick out of this, he won’t admit it. Later, as I hand him money to pay the pizza
delivery person, he tells me he thinks Kermit has too much free time, but I know it’s Kermit’s way of
giving Boris something he thinks Boris needs.
BORIS CALLS ME AT WORK Monday afternoon to demand that I head for the train. I get
home at five, and he’s on the roof, shouting for me to hurry upstairs.
“It’s only for thirty minutes. After 5:30, it’s all over for the next 100 years!”
When I reach the roof, Boris is fussing with the telescope. Kermit leans against the chimney of the
building. He’s bundled tight in a thick coat with fur around the edge of the hood, fuzzy gloves, and a
thick wool scarf. It’s hard to tell if anyone’s really inside the coat and snow pants until Kermit waves
half-heartedly.
“It’s Boris’ coat,” Kermit says. “He didn’t want me to catch a cold. Go figure.”
Boris is pointing into the sky. “Fifteen more minutes and you’ll be able to see them the best. They’ll
shine like little stars.”
Boris talks about alignment, the predictions of Nostradamus, and why he prefers astronomy to
astrology. I stand next to Kermit, shivering. The wind is chilling, but the night is clear. Perfect for
stargazing.
As I stare into the sky, I wonder who else is stargazing. While Boris talks about inferior and superior
conjunctions, I think of our future. Singular life is not nearly as impressive as when taken in
conjunction with others, like the stars which combine into a blanket of motion and light.
For the first time in weeks, Seth isn’t thinking about the play. He’ll sleep well tonight knowing that he
has a chance of doing what no one believed was possible: a successful dramatization of Dante’s
Inferno.
Eventually, this thing Boris loves will invite him in and reveal itself. He’ll be riding his bike to the
Institute on a fresh spring morning, and the thought he’s been waiting his whole life for will be
reflected to him in the glimmering light off the Charles River. Aha, he’ll think, I’ve waited a long time
for you, but at last you’re here.
Kenny will have walk-on appearances as long as Kermit’s run continues. After closing night, Kenny
will wait backstage, arms filled with roses. There, they will have the chance to love again without
conditions.
And Chuck. Perhaps if he keeps asking, he’ll get the answer he wants.
In the last lines of the Inferno, Dante emerges from hell and notes, we came out to see once more
the stars. Paradise, too, ends with the stars, and it is suggested that Dante the Pilgrim becomes
part of what he sees. He does not understand, but he experiences. He journeys from bondage to
freedom, and therein finds happiness. If our lives were a script, we could know how we end.
“Three minutes to show time,” Boris announces.
I feel a tug on my sleeve. As I turn to look at Kermit, I notice the wrinkles around his eyes. Until now,
I’ve never noticed how old he looks, as if he is waiting not for something to begin, but rather for
something to end. Kermit’s legs waver under him and he teeters, falling against me. He clutches my
arm as he tries to right himself, like a man dizzy from age and exhaustion.
“Do you think Kenny’s up there?” he asks.
I take his hand and breathe. Yes.
my skin.
“Make me a cup of coffee?” he asks.
“Isn’t this abuse of landlord privileges?”
“You’re not just a tenant to me.” Kermit plays with his heavy ring of keys. “You’re my friend, my
confidante.”
“Something on your mind?”
“Funny you should ask. Kenny and I have been talking.”
“The Kenny?”
Kermit raises an eyebrow at me. “You think I’ve lost it, don’t you?” He shakes his head. “I thought
so, too. Even in death that damn man won’t leave me alone. It’s worse than A Christmas Carol.”
After my father died, my mother used to see him walking around the house. She swore he came
back to torture her by playing the accordion. She swore that she’d know she was in hell if she
heard accordion music when she entered the white light.
“What does Kenny want?”
“The same stuff he wanted when he was here. Don’t leave your hair in the sink after you shave.
Take out the trash. Eat a vegetable.” Kermit sighs. “Where do you think he is? I just want to know
he’s okay. I mean, I don’t think I believe in God anymore —or maybe it’s that God doesn’t believe in
me — but I want to know what you think.”
I look at the crows feet around Kermit’s eyes. His pale skin and the scruff shadowing his jaw make
him look tired.
I’m a cop-out agnostic. Content to say something exists, I am unable to pledge allegiance and
servitude to a deity and unwilling to embrace the morbidity of eternity existing in a pine box
burrowed through by worms.
“I don’t know what happens when we die.”
Dante fills my head and I wish Virgil could make an effort to save us. If life could imitate art, we
would each have a guide, but in this life, nothing divine intervenes for us. All we have is each other.
WEDNESDAY NIGHT’S REHEARSAL goes better. We make it all the way to the brain-
eaters from Canto XXXIII and Seth seems pleased. During a break, I ask him about his meeting with
Chuck.
“The good news is he’s single; the bad news – he’s straight.”
“That’s too bad.”
“He asked about you.”
“Did you tell him I have a leaky faucet?”
“I told him that your plumbing could use a good cleaning.”
“That’s attractive.”
“It’s a harmless crush. It could be worse. It’s not like I signed you up for an arranged marriage.”
After rehearsal, Chuck approaches me. “Hey,” he says flatly, reminding me of every boy I ever
knew in high school.
“You’ve come a long way in learning your lines.”
“Seth helped. So did these.” Chuck pulls a worn copy of Cliff’s Notes from his jeans.
“Did Seth give you those?”
“Library.”
“You went to the library?”
Chuck ignores this. He hooks his thumbs in his jeans and inflates his chest. “I’ve got a question for
you.”
Chuck’s eyes are a perfect shade of blue, the color of the sky right before it gets dark.
“This might sound stupid, but it’s bugging me. I thought this thing was supposed to be a comedy.”
I imagine the things Chuck might say to inspire laughter. I imagine he’s the type of man who
mishears song lyrics and sings awful alternatives with a straight face. I imagine he misuses big
words all the time: I’m notorious for my lovemaking skills.
“How can this be a comedy if nobody’s laughing?” He seems genuinely confused.
“That’s a more contemporary definition of comedy,” I say. “The classic distinction between comedy
and tragedy depends on what happens to the character at the end. In tragedy, a ‘good’ person
meets with a bad ending and the audience responds with pity and fear. In a classic comedy, the
audience witnesses a rise in fortune of a character they like. Things work out well for a good
person. In other words, there’s a happy ending.”
“So, I have to be likeable.”
“It helps, yes.”
“I can do that.” He stares at me and the pause is awkward. I button my coat. I see Kermit hanging
over the balcony, and I’m suddenly self-conscious, a young girl on her first date.
“Anything else?”
“Yeah.” Chuck cocks his head to the side. “If I practice – being likeable – do you think you’d like to
get a beer with me?”
My mind moves forward. I imagine how this will end: clothes on the floor, sweaty bodies, an
overwhelming sense of regret. This is destined to be a tragedy.
In the balcony, Kermit clears his throat.
“I can’t,” I tell Chuck. “I ride share with Kermit.”
“Oh.” He bounces back from his disappointment quickly. “Okay, I’ll think of something.” He winks at
me and walks away backwards, keeping his eyes on me until he’s at the door.
IN THE CAR, Kermit hisses at me. “What’s wrong with you?”
“What?”
“He’s gorgeous, and you need a date.”
“I’m fine on my own.”
“God knows I love you, but I think you’re missing the point. You can’t spend your days caring for a
man who’s trying to catch pneumonia and a frail, old queen who’ll die when he does.”
“Please don’t.”
“That’s the reality of it.” He holds my hand. His fingers feel as frail as dried twigs. “I was the whore
of Babylon. I flew by the seat of my pants – when I was wearing pants, that is.” His laugh turns to a
dry cough. “Kenny had a way of making none of that matter. All of this,” he says, looking at me. “It’s
been worth it.”
Kermit squeezes my hand. “You could be lonely for a lot of reasons, Goose. Fear, convenience,
laziness… a bad experience with someone or something you loved.” He tucks a strand of hair
behind my ear. “It’s pretty easy to be lonely, but it’s also pretty pointless.”
IT’S LATE, BUT BORIS comes upstairs when he returns from the lab. “I’ve been thinking,”
he says as soon as I let him in the door. “What about the market for a cold vaccine. Does it even
exist? I bet most people won’t be willing to spend money until they get infected.”
His cheeks are red from the cold weather and excitement of deep thought. “Even if a spray could
be created that would keep rhinoviruses from attaching to the ICAM-1 receptors on nasal epithelial
cells, would people care?”
I nod. Boris rants about Ipratroprium, Naproxen and interferon-alpha2b. When he finally settles
down next to me on the couch with a glass of wine, I declare a moratorium on science.
“Let’s talk about love.”
“Kermit’s passion; I’m logic.”
“Not true. People aren’t that easy. Have you or have you not been in love?”
“It doesn’t matter.” Boris fidgets as he sits next to me.
“Of course, it matters.”
“There was a woman. Before I began work on my doctorate.”
“What was she like?”
“What does it matter? She’s not here now.”
“But she existed. She was a piece of your life.”
“Exactly. Past tense.”
“Still, you must think of her now and then.”
Boris shakes his head. “She could be a housewife in Oklahoma or a showgirl in Vegas. It makes no
difference.”
“You’re not curious at all?”
Boris snorts. “You and Kermit both equate love with a fear of letting go. Maybe I did the best thing
by letting her leave. The memory doesn’t remember things as they were, but more often as we wish
they’d been. Once a person leaves your life, you can change things. Who’ll disagree with you? You
forget things: birthmarks, crooked teeth, hot tempers, until you’re more in love with the idea of that
person. I choose not to do that.”
Boris is right, but I’d never tell him so. I still remember my leading men, even though we left each
other long ago. I remember Cyrano’s drunken kisses in the costume room, the lines of Petruchio’s
muscular arms, and Jack Worthing’s highbrow wit. Neither Rosencrantz nor Guildenstern ever gave
me an orgasm, and Estragon and I mutually decided we could no longer wait for Godot. I remember
how the Man from La Mancha never looked over his shoulder the last time he walked away from my
apartment.
AT REHEARSAL, I sit near the back of the house. I try to take notes, but Chuck mesmerizes
me. His lines are perfect. He’s animated. He’s given Dante the Pilgrim a sense of purpose. For the
first time, we make it through the entire play in a single rehearsal.
Seth whispers to me as he stares at Chuck, “Is that our Chuck? This is too good to be true.”
At the end of the evening, Seth is glowing. He tells me, “I think we might pull this off.”
Once Seth dismisses the cast, Chuck jogs back and tugs on my coat to stop me from leaving.
“Dante’s like a plumber, ” he says.
“Do tell. How is the author of one of the most profound poems ever written—like a plumber?”
“Dante’s got to go to hell to see people who have fallen into traps, who are making excuses.
Dante’s got to soak up all this stuff so he doesn’t make the same mistakes. Hell’s not only about
wrong action. It’s also about wrong belief. Dante’s like a plumber because he has to get down in
everyone else’s shit to know how he sees the world.”
Chuck is proud of himself. He smiles. “Have a beer with me?”
“No.”
Chuck is still smiling. “Okay,” he says. “Dante waited forever, too. But in the end – once he gets to
Paradise—he sees his girl.”
BORIS STOPS BY MY OFFICE at the Institute, so I know he’s excited. “December 8th.
Mark your calendar.”
“What’s the occasion?” I ask, still trying to recover from the shock of seeing him standing next to my
desk.
“The planets will line up.”
“Planets?”
“Those things in the solar system, Goose. Monday night. I’m borrowing a telescope so we can see
Pluto,” he adds over his shoulder as he disappears into the hallway.
SUNDAY MORNING, Kermit comes downstairs and hands me two tapes.
“What’s this?”
“In case,” he says and neither of us finishes his thought. “One for you, one for Seth.” He pours
himself a cup of coffee and sits down. “I think it’ll fit what Seth’s doing.”
“How did you do this so quickly?”
“The script, some of Dante’s love poetry from the Vita nuova, a little bit of criticism on the collected
works of Dante, and Kenny.”
“Were you talking with him?”
“Remembering him. After reading the love poems, I realized Kenny’s my Beatrice.” Kermit’s
forehead wrinkles.
“Dante says that love moves from preoccupation with your own feelings, to enjoyment of the other
person, to ultimate concern with the other person’s happiness. For Dante, this became concern
with Beatrice’s spiritual well being because she died young. Like Kenny. Dante’s willing to go
through hell to meet her again.”
Kermit looks out the window. “I was stuck in phase two, still thinking about how much I enjoy Kenny.
This,” he taps the tape. “This is me in phase three. Me concerned only about Kenny.
“I met Kenny at a closing night party and we talked all night. I was scared shitless. Kenny was so
smart, I thought there was no way he’d want to spend the rest of his life with a landscaper who
dabbled in community theater as a way to meet men and get free drinks. But we were happy. Even
now, some people may see this as a horrible way to die, but I’d do it again.”
BEFORE WE MEET FOR our television party, Kermit hatches a new plan for driving Boris
crazy. At 7:30, I stop upstairs to see if Kermit wants a pizza and find him in a t-shirt, his pajama
bottoms, and a tuxedo jacket with tails.
“What’s the occasion?”
Kermit leans out his door, hollers Boris’ name down the stairwell, waits for a response and then,
with the grandeur of a prodigy, flips his tails and sits at the organ. The evening’s repertoire
consists of songs originally about sunshine. He belts his way through standard favorites like
Mucous on my Shoulder Makes Me Happy, You are the Rhinovirus of My Life, and is just about to
hit the high note in You Are my Nasal Spray, my only Nasal Spray, You make me hap-PY when
Boris bolts upstairs and begins bashing Kermit in the head with a red velour pillow from Kermit’s
couch.
Even if Boris gets a kick out of this, he won’t admit it. Later, as I hand him money to pay the pizza
delivery person, he tells me he thinks Kermit has too much free time, but I know it’s Kermit’s way of
giving Boris something he thinks Boris needs.
BORIS CALLS ME AT WORK Monday afternoon to demand that I head for the train. I get
home at five, and he’s on the roof, shouting for me to hurry upstairs.
“It’s only for thirty minutes. After 5:30, it’s all over for the next 100 years!”
When I reach the roof, Boris is fussing with the telescope. Kermit leans against the chimney of the
building. He’s bundled tight in a thick coat with fur around the edge of the hood, fuzzy gloves, and a
thick wool scarf. It’s hard to tell if anyone’s really inside the coat and snow pants until Kermit waves
half-heartedly.
“It’s Boris’ coat,” Kermit says. “He didn’t want me to catch a cold. Go figure.”
Boris is pointing into the sky. “Fifteen more minutes and you’ll be able to see them the best. They’ll
shine like little stars.”
Boris talks about alignment, the predictions of Nostradamus, and why he prefers astronomy to
astrology. I stand next to Kermit, shivering. The wind is chilling, but the night is clear. Perfect for
stargazing.
As I stare into the sky, I wonder who else is stargazing. While Boris talks about inferior and superior
conjunctions, I think of our future. Singular life is not nearly as impressive as when taken in
conjunction with others, like the stars which combine into a blanket of motion and light.
For the first time in weeks, Seth isn’t thinking about the play. He’ll sleep well tonight knowing that he
has a chance of doing what no one believed was possible: a successful dramatization of Dante’s
Inferno.
Eventually, this thing Boris loves will invite him in and reveal itself. He’ll be riding his bike to the
Institute on a fresh spring morning, and the thought he’s been waiting his whole life for will be
reflected to him in the glimmering light off the Charles River. Aha, he’ll think, I’ve waited a long time
for you, but at last you’re here.
Kenny will have walk-on appearances as long as Kermit’s run continues. After closing night, Kenny
will wait backstage, arms filled with roses. There, they will have the chance to love again without
conditions.
And Chuck. Perhaps if he keeps asking, he’ll get the answer he wants.
In the last lines of the Inferno, Dante emerges from hell and notes, we came out to see once more
the stars. Paradise, too, ends with the stars, and it is suggested that Dante the Pilgrim becomes
part of what he sees. He does not understand, but he experiences. He journeys from bondage to
freedom, and therein finds happiness. If our lives were a script, we could know how we end.
“Three minutes to show time,” Boris announces.
I feel a tug on my sleeve. As I turn to look at Kermit, I notice the wrinkles around his eyes. Until now,
I’ve never noticed how old he looks, as if he is waiting not for something to begin, but rather for
something to end. Kermit’s legs waver under him and he teeters, falling against me. He clutches my
arm as he tries to right himself, like a man dizzy from age and exhaustion.
“Do you think Kenny’s up there?” he asks.
I take his hand and breathe. Yes.